The vast memorial site, known as the Valley of the Fallen, also contains the remains of 34,000 people killed on both sides of Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war – which was started by Franco’s rebellion against the elected government.

The site was partly built by political prisoners, whom his regime subjected to forced labour.

Many Spaniards see the Valley as a loathsome monument to the triumph of fascism, and want Franco to be reburied elsewhere.

Image copyrightReuters

Image caption
Thousands of victims of the Spanish Civil War are also buried in mass graves at the Valley of the Fallen

“Franco’s remains can’t be placed in any place where they could be glorified,” she said, adding that the government “has mechanisms” to block the move.

Image copyrightReuters

Image caption
There are fears the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid will become a protest site if Franco is reburied there

As the cathedral is a Catholic church, the Vatican has also weighed in – backing the government’s search for an alternative location.

One possibility is the El Prado cemetery near Madrid, where Franco’s wife is buried.

Is Spain still haunted by the Franco era?

Democracy is well established now, but the Franco era does still haunt Spain. There was an unwritten “pact of forgetting” during the democratic transition.

An Amnesty Law adopted in 1977 prevents any criminal investigation into the Franco years.

Statues of Franco were removed and many streets were renamed, to erase obvious signs of the fascist past.

A Historical Memory Law, passed in 2007 by the socialist government at the time, recognised the war victims on both sides and provided some help for surviving victims of Franco’s dictatorship and their families.

But the work to locate and rebury thousands of civil war dead has been slow and controversial.

More than 100,000 victims of the conflict, and the ferocious repression carried out afterwards, are still missing.

Artist Mr Terneiro, 49, told Spain’s El Mundo newspaper that he painted the dove as a “protest action” against the theft of freedom, which he said his parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced.

“It’s my little grain of sand,” he said. “I hope it alleviates the pain of the losers of the civil war.”

Francisco Franco, 1892-1975

Image copyrightGetty Images

Born in Galicia to a military family, became the youngest general in Spain in the 1920s

Following the election of the leftist Popular Front in 1936, Franco and other generals launched a revolt, which sparked the three-year civil war

Helped by Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Franco won the war in 1939 and established a dictatorship, proclaiming himself head of state – “El Caudillo”

Franco kept a tight grip on power until his death in 1975, after which Spain made a transition to democracy